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Ethnobotany

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After developing a working plant list for the medicinal plants I plan to research and cultivate as part of a garden that suits the needs of my community, I began looking into the historical and cultural uses of the plants beyond their contemporary and well-known uses.  From here, I researched ethnobotany; the study of the relationship between plants and people. Ethnobotany focuses on how the plants available to a group of people shape their culture, and how a culture of people maintains their relationship to the earth around them with plants. Ehtnobotany plays a particular role in researching the historical uses of native plants in my bioregion because it reflects how the people who previously inhabited this land utilized their resources and the relationship that they had with these plants.

The Iroquois relationship to medicinal plants (and uses of the plants) reflects how the uses of native plants have changed over time in my bioregion and how the use of these plants and cultural value originated. Though Pennsylvania was not historically the origin or primary location of the Iroquois, many Native American trading trails go through Pennsylvania, especially central Pennsylvania, and these trading routes serve as an opportunity for material and cultural exchanges.  Researching the historical origin of native medicinal plant use; such as bergamot, black cohosh, and dandelion, demonstrates how the relationship of one culture to its plants has passed to other cultures. Specifically, the plant use and relationship to plants of the Iroquois was passed on to many of the early European settlers and then developed into the contemporary uses we associate the plants with today. Though the uses of the plants have remained the same over time in many cases, the relationships that different cultures maintain with plants (and the earth around them) changed greatly over time.

Ethnobotany connects to ecofeminist ideals because it describes how a culture interacts with its plant resources and how a culture develops based on nature.  In regards to medicinal herbs, people developed a relationship to nature as they utilized the plants available locally to remedy the health needs of their communities.

Sources:

“History of Susquehannock Indians”. http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/envi….

“Ethnobotany from a Native American Perspective”. http://www.bgci.org/resources/article/04….

Herrick, James W. Iroquois Medical Botany. Syracuse University Press: Syracuse NY, 1995.

Balick, Michael J. and Paul Alan Cox. Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany. Scientific American Library: New York, 1996.


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